Author and biologist Olivia Carril will travel to Ohio in August to teach four daylong native bee workshops. Each workshop includes hands-on bee identification using microscopes as well as field experiences with plant and bee experts.

Calling all Master Gardeners, OCVN’ers and others interested in learning more about pollinators!

Actual pollinators will vary 🙂

Come to Secrest Arboretum on Tuesday June 27th and/or Wednesday July 26th for two pollinator workshops, each 10AM to 2PM. Participants will spend time in the classroom learning about pollinator biology and practicing identification skills, then we’ll head outside to the gardens in search of pollinators. Both sessions will include bee and plant information, but June’s session will focus on bee identification, and July’s will focus on plants for pollinators. You may register for both; there is likely to be some overlap…but lots of fun in the field and classroom on both days!

The health of honey bee colonies cannot be understood apart from the landscapes in which they live. Urban and agricultural developments are two of the most dramatic and widespread forms of human land use, but their respective effects on honey bees remain poorly understood. Here, we evaluate the relative attractiveness of urban and agricultural land use to honey bees by conducting a foraging choice test. Our study was conducted in the summer and fall, capturing a key portion of the honey bee foraging season that includes both the shift from summer- to fall-blooming flora and the critical period of pre-winter food accumulation. Colonies located at an apiary on the border of urban and agricultural landscapes were allowed to forage freely, and we observed their spatial and taxonomic foraging patterns using a combination of dance language analysis and pollen identification. We found a consistent spatial bias in favor of the agricultural landscape over the urban, a pattern that was corroborated by the prevalence in pollen samples of adventitious taxa common in the agricultural landscape. The strongest bias toward the agricultural environment occurred late in the foraging season, when goldenrod became the principal floral resource. We conclude that, in our study region, the primary honey bee foraging resources are more abundant in agricultural than in urban landscapes, a pattern that is especially marked at the end of the foraging season as colonies prepare to overwinter. Urban beekeepers in this region should, therefore, consider supplemental feeding when summer-blooming flora begin to decline. (Full paper here.)

(Inside Science) — Sam Droege slides a drawer from a tall white cabinet, releasing an odor of mothballs. Row after row of small bodies stand skewered on pins, fragile limbs frozen, furry backs­ as bright as sunflowers. They are all examples of Bombus affinis, most collected from meadows where this bumblebee species no longer flies. The surrounding drawers hold nearly 2,000 more.

“Affinis was a dirtball species. It was super common. That’s why there’s drawers and drawers of them,” said Droege, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey whose job sometimes involves identifying bees here at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Earlier this month, the insects in the open drawer, more commonly called rusty patched bumblebees, were listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that they have declined by more than 90 percent over the last decade. According to Rich Hatfield, a senior conservation biologist at the Xerces Society who helped assess the species for the IUCN, the leading suspect in their disappearance is disease spread by other bees — commercial bumblebees raised by humans to pollinate crops.

Most people have heard that pollinators are in trouble, and with them agricultural products worth more than $200 billion annually. But public and policy concern largely revolves around western honey bees, a domesticated species whose population has actually risen worldwide over the past few decades, despite recent challenges faced by beekeepers. Their success stands in stark contrast to the more than 20,000 other distinct species of bees worldwide, many of which are thought to be declining or facing extinction.

Bees are the most important pollinators on earth, pollinating more plants than any other group of animals, said Hatfield. In appearance, they range from glimmering green gemstones the size of a gumball to brownish specks that could crawl through a cocktail straw. And while losing one bee species probably won’t shatter ecosystems, losing enough of them will, said Droege. Diverse wild bee communities help buffer ecosystems, ensuring that something is left to pollinate plants even under the stress of climate change and other environmental challenges. They also help pollinate crops, sometimes more efficiently than the commercial bees farmers increasingly rely on.

Humans raise a small number of bee species commercially, and these managed bees are crucial for modern food production. But they don’t always live in harmony with the natural world. Managed bees can spread diseases, compete with wild bees for food, invade new habitats and upset the balance of plant species.

Bees as livestock

Humans first domesticated honey bees, a group that includes several similar species, around 9,000 years ago. Honey bees are native to Asia, Europe and Africa, but humans have carried them around the globe, allowing them to establish feral populations. In most cases, the invasions happened so long ago that native bees have either adapted or gone extinct.

“We basically have no idea what the native bee fauna looked like prior to the introduction of honey bees,” said Dave Goulson, an entomologist at the University of Sussex in England. “It may have absolutely devastated the bee fauna of the Americas.”

Fewer than 50 years ago, people also began raising other types of bees for crop pollination, including several species of bumblebees. Bumblebees are capable of shaking pollen loose from plants such as eggplants and tomatoes — crops honey bees can’t pollinate. While honey bees still dominate the beekeeping world, farmers now use bumblebees routinely, most often in greenhouses.

From a typical bumblebee colony of a few hundred, only the young queens survive the winter, hibernating until they can start their own colonies in spring. Farmers usually buy new colonies from breeders each year. Honey bees, in contrast, live in colonies of up to 60,000 bees, and these colonies can persist indefinitely.

Recently, problems such as varroa mites, inhospitable farmland and colony collapse disorder have made it harder for beekeepers to maintain colonies and meet the rising demand for bees in agriculture. In the United States, beekeepers now lose about 40 percent of their colonies each year, four times the fraction they consider acceptable. They can replace lost colonies by splitting surviving colonies in two, but this technique can become unsustainable.

Nevertheless, the total number of managed honey bees worldwide has risen by 45 percent over the last half century. Honey bees are in no danger of extinction, said Hatfield — and our reliance on them may come at a cost.

How bee disease spreads

Managed bees may transmit new diseases to wild bees, or they may allow existing diseases to multiply and “spill back” into wild populations. Commercial beekeeping often involves maintaining bees at high densities, making it easy for diseases to pass from bee to bee. And companies routinely feed bumblebees with pollen gathered by honey bees, helping diseases to spread between species, said Peter Graystock, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Riverside. Some companies have started irradiating the pollen to kill pathogens, but others still feed it to bees as is.

In a 2013 study, Graystock and his colleagues tested imported bumblebee colonies that had supposedly been screened for disease, and found that more than three-fourths of them contained disease-causing microbes. When the researchers experimentally fed pollen and waste from the infected bee shipments to healthy bumble and honey bees, many of the new bees got sick.

However, flowers are probably the hotspots of disease transmission to wild bees, said Graystock. With colleagues, he recently demonstrated that two commercial bee species, buff-tailed bumblebees and western honey bees, can rapidly spread five kinds of pathogens between flowers. Some of the pathogens could only infect one of the two bee species, but they often hitched a ride on the other one.

“Imagine flowers as a dinner plate that you’re eating from, but everybody else is also eating from that dinner plate as well,” said Graystock. “They could accumulate quite a lot of different microbes.”

Evidence from the field supports the idea that wild bees can catch diseases from managed bees. In Canada, Ireland and England, researchers have found elevated disease rates in wild bees living near greenhouses that use commercial bumblebees

The lack of data on most wild bee species makes it hard to judge the threat facing their populations. Some ailments, such as the varroa mites that infest managed honey bees, appear to be harmless to other kinds of insects, including wild bumblebees. But other diseases, such as deformed wing virus and the dysentery-causing fungus Nosema ceranae, are known to harm multiple species that aren’t closely related. Researchers usually have no idea whether a given wild pollinator can catch a particular disease, or how sick it would get if it did.

Still, circumstantial evidence suggests that the impacts on wild pollinators can be devastating. In North America, a species called Franklin’s bumblebee is thought to have recently gone extinct, and four other once-common species have suffered estimated declines of more than 70 percent.

Wiped out by plagues

While no one knows for sure what’s killing wild American bumblebees, the dominant hypothesis is one or more diseases introduced by commercial bumblebees imported from Europe, said Sheila Colla, a conservation biologist at York University in Toronto. The timing matches up with the rise of commercial bumblebees for pollinating greenhouse crops. At least two of the declining species have high rates of a fungal disease called Nosema bombi, and the strain they carry is genetically similar to the one found in bees from Europe, suggesting it may have been recently introduced. And many researchers think that the wild bees have vanished too quickly, and over too wide an area, for the culprit to be anything except disease. For example, the rusty patched bumblebees that just received endangered species protections have disappeared from around three-fourths of their historic range, according to a study by Colla and her colleagues.

“You can’t really chalk it up to something like pesticide use, because that wouldn’t explain why it disappeared in the Smoky Mountains,” she said.

In the United States, it’s now illegal to import any kind of bumblebee from overseas. But non-native bumblebees are still pouring into Argentina, even though two species have already turned invasive there. The second invasive species, known as the buff-tailed bumblebee, was first introduced to Argentina in 2006 to pollinate crops. Since then, feral buff-tailed bumblebees have spread across the region, wiping out native Patagonian bumblebees as they go.

Patagonian bumblebees are the largest bumblebees in the world, and the only ones native to the southern part of South America. They used to be a familiar sight in Chilean and Argentinian gardens, where their deep buzz and fluffy orange bulk made them hard to miss.

“They look like little bears,” said Marina Arbetman, a molecular ecologist at the National University of Río Negro and the National University of Comahue in Bariloche, Argentina.

Patagonian bumblebees have vanished so fast that they are almost certainly suffering from a disease epidemic, said Arbetman. She has an idea what that disease might be: Apicystis bombi, a parasite that attacks bees’ fat stores. The parasite was absent in the region until buff-tailed bumblebees invaded, but now it is found in native Patagonian bumblebees and feral buff-tailed bumblebees, as well as another bumblebee species that invaded earlier. Genetically, the parasites look similar to A. bombi parasites from Europe, suggesting that, like N. bombi in North America, they too rode in recently on commercial bees.

The loss of Patagonian bumblebees could have ecosystem-wide impacts, said Arbetman’s adviser Carolina Morales, an ecologist at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council and the National University of Comahue. Patagonian bumblebees have longer tongues than the invasive species, enabling them to pollinate native plants with long, tube-shaped flowers. Invasive buff-tailed bumblebees can’t reach into long flowers normally, so they tear holes in them instead, stealing nectar without ever touching the pollen. One native plant appears to already be suffering reproductive costs, producing less fruit in landscapes taken over by the invasive bees, according to unpublished research by Morales and her colleagues.

Now, a few Patagonian bumblebees are hanging on across their former range, but sightings in most areas are rare. Arbetman spotted one last fall, but before then, she hadn’t seen any in two years. “And you know I’m looking at every flower,” she said.

Fighting over flowers

Competition for food is another source of conflict between managed and wild bees. Wildflowers are growing scarcer around the world, and wild bee populations are often limited by how much pollen and nectar they can find. Commercial beekeepers need places to keep their bees when they’re not on pollination jobs, and in the United States they sometimes use public land.

Resource competition between managed and wild bees is controversial, and in some cases, it appears not to be a problem. But in the majority of experimental studies where scientists have tested specifically for competition, they have found it, said Victoria Wojcik, research director for an international nonprofit called the Pollinator Partnership in San Francisco. Most such studies have focused on bumblebees, so there aren’t enough data to make recommendations on preserving other types of bees. But if land managers have sensitive bumblebee habitat, they may want to think twice before allowing commercial honey bee hives on their land, said Wojcik. “There could be food-based competition, and the bumblebee loses in that situation,” she said.

Bumblebees may be losing out to feral honey bees in a remote nature reserve in California, even though there are no managed hives around. The site had hardly any feral honey bees in the late 1990s, probably because of a mite infestation that swept through honey bee populations shortly beforehand. But since then, honey bees have recovered, and the native bumblebees have drastically declined. Diane Thomson, an ecologist and conservation biologist at the Claremont Colleges in California, monitored their populations over 15 years.

“I’ve been able to show, from looking at what plants they’re using, that bumblebees appear to be getting squeezed off of certain floral resources that are important for them as the number of honey bees has gone up,” she said.

These findings reinforce an earlier experiment Thomson conducted at the same site. In that study, she brought in honey and bumblebee colonies and placed them at various distances from each other. Bumblebees placed near honey bee hives had less reproductive success, producing fewer and smaller fertile bees capable of starting a new generation.

Now, Thomson’s experimental hives are long gone, but native bumblebees are still being outcompeted. Their disappearance is especially striking because it happened in a protected area, far from pesticides, development and human disturbance.

“My site is really buffered from some of the potentially very harmful causes of bee declines in other places,” said Thomson. “And yet, we’re still seeing a decline in these native bumblebee populations.”

What can be done to save the bees

People can reduce the risks to wild bees by not importing managed bees from other countries, by reducing the use of non-native species, and by thoroughly screening for diseases, policies that some countries already employ to varying degrees. Another simple strategy is to put screens on greenhouse vents before releasing bumblebees inside, a practice that Japan mandated after suffering its own bumblebee invasion, said UC Riverside’s Graystock. But the most powerful way to help wild and managed bees coexist may be something beekeepers are already pushing for: creating more habitat where pollinators can find food.

Farmland used to have lots of rich pollinator habitat, with diverse plant species flowering at different times. Wild bees took care of most crop pollination, while honey bees were primarily used for honey, said Zac Browning, a fourth-generation commercial beekeeper based in Jamestown, North Dakota, who owns around 27,000 honey bee colonies. Browning said he has seen agriculture move toward giant, pesticide-soaked fields planted with a single type of crop — a landscape hostile to wild and managed bees alike. Now, he said, farmland is “probably, in many ways, the most dangerous place to be, if you’re a bee.”

Since bees often can’t survive in modern farmland, farmers now pay beekeepers to bring in bees just when their crop is flowering. The new system puts stress on both commercial and wild bees, forcing them to compete for scarce resources. This stress probably makes them more vulnerable to disease, said Graystock.

Modern crop pollination may also threaten food security. A growing body of research shows the crucial role wild insects still play in agriculture, ensuring stable production from year to year and boosting yields regardless of whether honey bees are present. And the more a crop relies on a single kind of bee, the more vulnerable it is to diseases and other crises that might strike that bee’s population.

Project Apis, an agricultural nonprofit focused on honey bee health, is working to increase pollinator habitat on farmland by providing seeds for farmers to plant in unused patches of land. Its seed mixes include plants for native species as well as for honey bees, said Danielle Downey, the project’s executive director.

“It would be great if there were not so much demand for every scrap of habitat that’s left,” she said.

Hatfield agrees. He works for the Xerces Society, a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon that focuses on protecting wild insects and other invertebrates. “Our take-home message always comes back to ‘if you want to do something, the right thing to do is to plant habitat,'” he said. “Habitat is going to support our native bees, and it’s also going to support the honey bees.”

Policy makers are also starting to realize that bee-friendly landscapes are important. The U.S. farm bill has offered incentives for landowners to restore pollinator habitat since 2008, and several states are starting to plant pollinator habitat along highways. And while the federal Pollinator Health Action Plan released last year has been criticized for focusing too much on honey bees, it does list habitat for all pollinators as a top objective.

Backyard Beekeeping Won’t Save the Bees

Not all managed bees are part of commercial businesses. People also keep honey bees for fun, often in backyards or on rooftops. The hobby is soaring in popularity, with major cities such as Los Angeles and New York recently lifting restrictions on urban beekeeping. In the Washington, D.C. area, so many people want to be beekeepers that there isn’t enough room for them in beginner classes run by local clubs, said Jan Day, an educational technology consultant who has raised bees in her backyard for three years.

Like many beekeepers, Day is fascinated by bee society. She uses her bees’ honey to make a fermented drink called mead, and she values the connection her bees provide to the natural world.

“I’m much more aware of the changing seasons, and what’s blooming at any given time. Now I pay attention to that stuff,” she said. “It has been one of the most thoroughly engaging hobbies I’ve ever had.”

While Day loves her bees, she doesn’t view them as a way to help the wild pollinators she also cares about. But some hobbyist beekeepers may not understand the distinction, she said. People hear that bees are in trouble, and they want to help by getting their own colony. Day advises them to plant wildflowers instead.

The Xerces Society’s Hatfield agrees. There are good reasons to raise bees, he said. Moreover, beekeepers are strong promoters of habitat restoration and pesticide reduction, policies that help managed and wild bees alike. But becoming a beekeeper is not a route to pollinator conservation. According to Hatfield, “That’s kind of like keeping chickens for bird conservation.”

Unknown populations

Patagonian bumblebees and rusty patched bumblebees are flashy species that were once very common, so people noticed when they vanished. But they are the exception. For the vast majority of wild bee species, no one knows whether they are in danger, because no one has data on their populations. Often, we don’t even know they exist. According to one estimate, Earth holds another 20,000 bee species waiting to be discovered, on top of the 20,000 already described, said Sam Droege.

Droege has spent years trying to fill the knowledge gaps, amidst changing political landscapes that shuffled him between programs and agencies. He designed a nationwide monitoring program for U.S. bees, but the funding dried up before it could bear fruit. Now, he runs the USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab in Beltsville, Maryland, which catalogs local bees, creates identification guides, and helps land managers across the country conduct their own, small-scale surveys. But despite his efforts, there is still no comprehensive monitoring effort for U.S. bees.

“There’s no program,” he said. “There are no real statistics other than ‘can’t find it anymore.'”

Back at the museum, Droege picks up a tiny black bee by the pin and holds it in the circle of light at the base of his microscope. He turns the bee until light glances sideways off of minute pits and hairs, shadows revealing their arrangement. It is a female Pseudopanurgus, a poorly described genus, and Droege can’t tell whether this bee represents any named species. He has no idea whether she came from a thriving population, or one on the brink of extinction.

First bee in the continental U.S. is listed under the Endangered Species Act

PORTLAND, Ore., January 10, 2017—Responding to a petition from the Xerces Society, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will list the rusty patched bumble bee as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, making it the first bee in the continental United States to receive such protection. The decision will be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, January 11.

With this listing, the rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis) will be protected from activities that could cause it to go extinct. The Fish and Wildlife Service has the authority to develop and implement a recovery plan.

“We are very pleased to see one of North America’s most endangered species receive the protection it needs,” said Sarina Jepsen, director of endangered species at the Xerces Society. “Now that the Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the rusty patched bumble bee as endangered, it stands a chance of surviving the many threats it faces—from the use of neonicotinoid pesticides to diseases.”

“The Fish and Wildlife Service has relied upon the best available science and we welcome this decision,” said Rich Hatfield, senior conservation biologist at the Xerces Society. “Addressing the threats that the rusty patched bumble bee faces will help not only this species, but countless other native pollinators that are so critical to the functioning of natural ecosystems and agriculture.”

“Today’s Endangered Species listing is the best—and probably last—hope for the recovery of the rusty patched bumble bee. Bumble bees are dying off, vanishing from our farms, gardens, and parks, where they were once found in great numbers,” said Rebecca Riley, Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who partnered with the Xerces Society to encourage the Fish and Wildlife Service to take action on the listing petition for this species.

The rusty patched bumble bee is not only an important pollinator of prairie wildflowers, but also of cranberries, blueberries, apples, alfalfa and numerous other crops. Once common from Minnesota to Maine, and south through the Appalachians, this species has been lost from 87% of its historic range since the late 1990s.

“Native pollinators in the U.S. provide essential pollination services to agriculture which are valued at more than $9 billion annually,” said Eric Lee-Mäder, pollinator program co-director at the Xerces Society. “We have already seen incredible leadership from the agricultural community in restoring and protecting hundreds of thousands of acres of habitat for the rusty patched bumble bee and other native pollinators. Providing a landscape that sustains all of our native bees will require continued investment by public agencies, as well as efforts from private residents in both urban and rural areas.”

The scientific consensus agrees that pathogens and pesticides are the two biggest threats to the existence of this species, compounded by loss of habitat. The rusty patched bumble bee is already listed as “endangered” under Canada’s Species at Risk Act and as “critically endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

The Xerces Society commends the Fish and Wildlife Service for moving forward on this decision and looks forward to working toward recovery of this species.

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To view the ruling by the FWS: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/11/2017-00195/endangered-and-threatened-species-rusty-patched-bumble-bee

For more information about the rusty patched bumble bee, visit http://www.xerces.org/rustypatched

Read a blog about the rusty patched bumble bee: http://www.xerces.org/blog/usfws-esa-protection-rusty-patched/

For more information about the Xerces Society’s bumble bee conservation efforts, visit http://www.xerces.org/bumblebees/

Species profile for Canada’s Species at Risk Act: http://www.registrelep-sararegistry.gc.ca/species/speciesDetails_e.cfm?sid=1081

Species profile for International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/44937399/0

About the Xerces Society

The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat. Established in 1971, the Society is at the forefront of invertebrate protection worldwide, harnessing the knowledge of scientists and the enthusiasm of citizens to implement conservation programs. To learn more about our work, please visit www.xerces.org.

Monarchs need more than milkweed to support them throughout the year. Adult monarchs need nectar to fuel them during spring migration and breeding and to build up stores of fat which sustain them during fall migration and winter.

Working with the Monarch Joint Venture and the National Wildlife Federation, the Xerces Society has created a series of nectar plant lists for the continental U.S. based on a database of nearly 24,000 monarch nectaring observations. Each of the 15 regional guides highlights species that are commercially available, are native to and widely found in the region, and are known to be hardy or relatively easy to grow in a garden setting.

Read more about this project on the Xerces blog, or find a nectar plant guide for your region here.

“These once-common butterflies are growing less familiar, and we know private lands will continue to play a crucial role in aiding the recovery of this species that serves as an indicator of ecosystem health,” NRCS Chief Jason Weller said. “America’s farmers, ranchers and forest landowners are stewards of the land, and this effort helps them make voluntary improvements that benefit working lands and monarchs.”

NRCS Associate Chief Leonard Jordan unveiled this new conservation effort today in Kansas City, Missouri at the annual conference of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters. Missouri is one of the target states in this effort that benefits the orange-and-black butterflies known for their annual, multi-generational migration from central Mexico to as far north as Canada. Monarch populations have decreased significantly over the past two decades, in part because of the decrease in native plants like milkweed – the sole source of food for monarch caterpillars.

NRCS will provide technical and financial assistance to help producers and conservation partners plant milkweed and nectar-rich plants along field borders, in buffers along waterways or around wetlands, in pastures and other suitable locations. NRCS also help producers manage their pastures in ways that increase critical populations of milkweed and nectar plants while also improving the health of their rangelands.

Assistance is available to producers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin. These states are at the heart of the monarch migration. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and remaining funds from the former Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) provide funding for this work. Additionally, NRCS is offering support for related enhancements through the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) to establish monarch habitat. These enhancements are available nationwide.

NRCS accepts EQIP and CSP applications from producers on a continuous basis. Producers interested in participating should contact their local USDA service center to learn more. WRP funds will be used to enhance monarch habitat on existing wetland easements.

These conservation improvements not only benefit butterflies, they also strengthen agricultural operations, support other beneficial insects and wildlife and improve other natural resources. Appropriate buffer habitats and better rangeland and pasture management practices reduce erosion, increase soil health, inhibit the expansion of invasive species and provide food and habitat for insects and wildlife.

NRCS’ effort contributes to a multi-agency, international strategy to reverse the monarch’s population decline in North America, estimated to have decreased from one billion butterflies in 1995 down to about 34 million today. The Obama administration, through the National Strategy to Protect Pollinators and Their Habitat , has a goal of increasing the eastern population of monarchs back up to 225 million by 2020.

Producers not in the regions targeted by this effort are also eligible for assistance to make conservation improvements to their land that can benefit monarch butterflies and many other pollinators, such as honey bees and native bees. More than three dozen conservation practices offered by NRCS can provide benefits to pollinators. Additionally, this effort works hand-in-hand with a three-year-old NRCS honey bee conservation effortin the Midwest and Northern Plains.

Although soybean aphids remain at low levels, Reed Johnson and Andy Michel, two Ohio State University researchers are concerned that many growers are going to add insecticides to spray tanks when applying fungicides.

“Well, I’m going over the field anyway so I thought I’d add an insecticide for insurance purposes! The insecticide is relatively cheap and soybeans are worth so much!” is what researchers say they hear from farmers this time of year.

The researchers are clear that they do not recommend this practice, and feel an IPM approach is much better for everyone and everything, including the environment. They do not recommend an insecticide application unless there is a need. Full Story Here

WOOSTER, Ohio — Honeybees are negatively impacted by the insecticide-coated seeds of some field crops, yet they also seem to benefit from the presence of other field crops in the vicinity of their hives, according to research conducted by entomologists with the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University.

“Most corn seeds planted today are coated with insecticides. During the planting process, some of that coating is chipped off and the dust is released into the air and also lands on nearby flowers and trees,” said Reed Johnson, an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology.

Johnson and colleagues have studied the potential impact that such release of insecticidal dust during corn planting may have on honey bees. They found that bees do become exposed to the chemicals in several ways.

“Bees can pick up the insecticide from flowers and trees as they forage,” he said. “Also, the dust can stick to them as they travel across fields during the planting season. Finally, because corn planting gets underway at roughly the same time across the Midwest, there is a lot of this dust in the air in the spring and bees could become exposed to it that way, too.”

Once bees pick up the insecticide, they carry it back to their hives, where young members of the colony become exposed to it, Johnson said. This exposure can cause important losses to colonies early in the spring.

“Colonies do recover from these early losses later in the year. But such losses can negatively impact beekeepers and fruit and vegetable farmers, as they will have fewer bees for crucial pollination services during the summer,” Johnson said.

Johnson said there are several management decisions farmers can make to reduce the impact of insecticide-coated corn seeds on bees:

Kill weeds before planting so flowers don’t become exposed and foraging bees are not attracted to fields.

Use planters that don’t vent upwards but toward the ground. Johnson said farm equipment manufacturers have started to make these changes in recent years.

Seek out seeds without insecticidal coating for farms or fields that don’t require such an added insect-control measure. “Coated seeds are not needed in all situations and some fields will not benefit from them,” Johnson said. “They represent an added cost to corn farmers and definitely a high cost to beekeepers and farmers that rely on bees for pollination.”

While insecticide-coated corn seeds can have a negative impact on bees, the relationship between soybeans and these insects is quite different, Johnson said.

In another study, Johnson and postdoctoral researcher Chia-Hua Lin looked at the pollen content of honey collected by beekeepers from throughout Ohio over the summer of 2014. They found soybean pollen in 47 percent of the honey.

“We know that bees in Ohio are visiting soybeans, and that soybeans may be contributing to honey production,” Johnson said. “Also, there’s some evidence that pollination by bees can help increase soybean yield.”

Johnson said there are other questions that remain to be answered on this topic, including which soybean varieties are more attractive to bees and why.

“There is a good potential for people to work together on this line of research,” Johnson said. “It’s a valuable opportunity to have these two sides of agriculture — field crops and beekeeping — come together and explore mutual benefits.”

To learn more about current pollinator-related research, go to u.osu.edu/beelab.

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